When Colorado Springs-based artist Lupita Carrasco was growing up in San Diego, she thought she was of Mexican heritage, as her Mexican single mother raised her in a devout Catholic and traditional Mexican-style home.

She was shocked when her fourth-grade teacher split up the class by racial group for an activity and placed her not with her Mexican friends, but in the group for black students.

"Everyone was like, 'why did you put her over there?'" Carrasco said. "And it was because the teacher, who, it turned out, knew my dad, said that my dad was black."

The realization of her mixed-racial ancestry originally left Carrasco, who never met her father, deeply angry, she said. However, she said that anger evolved into curiosity about her cultural ancestry as she's grown older. She eventually decided to take a DNA test, while searching for a sibling she never knew growing up.

The results of that test revealed that Carrasco's DNA could be traced to several different countries and cultures, including England, Switzerland, Nigeria, Spain, The Congo and Mexico.

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Carrasco said her realization that she could grow up with a cultural perception of herself so different than the diverse history that was reflected in her DNA fascinated her. She decided to use her art to forge a connection to the cultures in her history she had previously had no contact with.

"I could've made the connection, really, with anything," she said. "I could've studied food or the religions of these areas, but I've always had a love for textiles. So I decided to start with that and to look at that patterning to find out about how these traditional materials are made."

A painting titled "Dida" is on display as part of "Lupita Carrasco: Exploring Ancestry Through Textiles" exhibit at the Loveland Museum. (Jenny Sparks / Loveland Reporter-Herald)

Telling a cultural story

That research ultimately led Carrasco, who normally paints realistic figurative paintings, to create a body of work consisting of a dozen paintings, reproducing and incorporating the textile patterns she found most interesting from the varying regions she researched.

Carrasco said most of the paintings are fairly strict reproductions of those patterns. Others, however, include figures and other elements Carrasco has added to tell a story or explore themes relating to culture and identity.

In one of those paintings, a baby is depicted as being wrapped in an American background against a Mexican tapestry background. According to Carrasco, the baby is "suspended over its Mexican culture but removed from it because they are enveloped in the fabric of this country."

Part of the "Lupita Carrasco: Exploring Ancestry Through Textiles" exhibit, is "The 4 Continents," left, on display. (Jenny Sparks / Loveland Reporter-Herald)

"I think a lot of us experience that and we might not even be able to see that there is a loss of the connections to our original culture," she said. "In the U.S., it seems like a lot of that is stripped away and we become this 'America thing' and I think maybe there is shame in carrying on traditions of our other cultures."

In another piece, a black woman stands, working against cotton and tobacco plants with small slivers of the bodies of a black and white man visible to her left and right sides.

"Part of that was me trying to make peace with some of the stuff in my past because the man that my mom had me with did her very wrong," she said. "So that one is about me trying to imagine that there were mothers and grandmothers and other people in this family that were something other than vile individuals. I am trying to connect with the good parts that are out there in my history."

Carrasco said she now feels enriched by that process of exploring her history and and hopes her project will lead others to want to do the same.

"I know not everybody is going to do a DNA test, but I think it would be really cool if people would actually look into their past if they know they have a connection to certain areas and actually look into the history and make a connection somewhere — either with traditions, foods, something good," she said. "There is so much beauty in those things and being able to make those connections just opens up our lives and our worlds so much more."

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